May 06, 2013

Anand on Commercialism & Legal Practice

This essay was presented at a conference on “The Law: Business or Profession? The Continuing Relevance of Julius Henry Cohen for the Practice of Law in the 21st Century.” It addresses a broad social issue: commercialism’s growing impact on society as a whole and how we might think about law and the role for lawyers in light of this state of affairs. Organized around an understanding of both economics and law as cultural practices – and, as such, as ways of knowing, or being in, the world – at least in United States, the broad message of the essay is that (a) the American embrace of the cultural practice of economics has put the political order in a bad place and, thus, the social situation is a troubled one and (b) the cultural practice of law and the legal profession represent a locus within which to assist society in moving in the direction of change.